[Dread]
Plot:Film student Stephen Grace is befriended by a disturbed, unsettling young man, Quaid, whose life has been distorted by a nightmare tragedy in his youth. Quaid convinces Stephen to make a documentary about people's worst fears, but Quaid soon goes over the edge in his quest to completely understand and experience the full measure of dread.

Cast:Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Evans, Laura Donnelly, Hanne Steen, Jonathan Readwin.

My Thoughts:Shock value over substance.

Review:"Dread" is an adaptation of the Clive Barker literary work, and was directed by Anthony DiBlasi. The film tells the story of a troubled loner and college student named Quaid, who meets another college student named Stephen. A girl named Abby soon enters the mix, and the three begin to become sort of like friends. Quaid however requests that they help him with an experiment which he is doing for one of his college courses. An experiment which involves bringing people as close to dread as possible, and to find the true meaning of it.

Once the two agree to Quaid's study, things slowly begin to take a turn for the worse, and Quaid's obsession with his experiment becomes a threat to both Abby and Stephen. "Dread" is an interesting film, from a plot standpoint. It basically puts forth a group of characters who are going to get to the bottom of a very powerful human emotion, Dread, which is kind of like depression and fear mixed together. However the movie employs too much shock value to be completely effective.

The story clicks pretty well, but the acting is so flat, and the characters are so cliche and haggard-looking that it comes off more as a "White Trash" version of "Saw" more than anything else. Only because the movie involves Quaid performing twisted and sick experiments on people to see how long it takes them to break down and enter a "dread"-like state of mind. Sure, the movie provides an intriguing catalyst for it's story, and some great plot possibilities, but when you fill the movie with characters that aren't intriguing to watch on screen, and then make them look like trailer park rejects, it really hurts the viewers ability to take the whole scenario seriously.

Honestly a lot of these characters seemed headed for bummerville anyways, with or without Quaid's experiments. The atmosphere of the movie captures the title really well though. If you've ever seen the remake of "Pulse", the atmosphere is a lot like that movie. Depressing, sour, dark, moody, and gloomy. Only with more color, and not the constant gray-gloom color "Pulse" carried for it's entire duration. "Dread" is by no means a boring movie, and it has a lot of scenes that will make you cringe, wince, and go wide-eyed a bit, but it's mostly all about shock value and grossness.

The film relies on that for the most part from time to time, and doesn't really give us much good or witty dialogue to chew on. Even the Quaid character comes off as just a self-righteous prick who enjoys torturing people for his own sick amusement, instead of a college student who went too far for a good grade. The pic obviously wants us to believe Quaid slowly became obsessed with his work, but the movie fails to do so, and instead puts Quaid out there as just one of those "crazy college student loners you've gotta watch out for from time to time."

The film does though do an excellent job of building up to Quaid's insanity, by putting Abby and Stephen together in a relationship of sorts, and exposing Abby as a very troubled and non-confident girl. Who is brought out of her enigmatic shell by Stephen. A move which angers Quaid once she shows up for a new session during the experiment. And this particular subplot of the movie should've been played up and shaped a lot better but unfortunately it wasn't.

Quaid's descent into madness came a bit too quickly, and really offset that intriguing twist in the film. The conclusion of the movie isn't really anything to write home about, and more than likely, anyone who watches a lot of these types of movies, where a person lures people into their life only to kill them later on for various purposes, will see "The End", coming from a mile away. With that being said though, "Dread" is worth seeing once due to it being a Clive Barker adapt.

But beware, the film isn't paced very well, nor are the characters that interesting to pay attention to. You might find some parts of this movie "dreadful", no pun intended. But the pic carries enough shock value to be effective in a few key areas.

Positives:Laura Donnelly gives a good performance as Abby, and there are more than a few very stomach-turning shock value moments.

Negatives:The characters are very boring and flat, many twists come off as too predictable, and there are a few plot points which had they been played up more, could've improved the overall quality of the movie.

Overall:Two out of four stars.





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